Gerald William Heaney
Judge Heaney no longer hears cases. This profile is preserved as a historical record of how they ruled.
How Judge Heaney decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
He required a meaningful evidentiary basis before shifting fees to an unsuccessful civil-rights plaintiff.
“So long as the plaintiff has “some basis” for the discrimination claim, a prevailing defendant may not recover attorneys’ fees.”
He protected parallel statutory remedies when an administrative forum could not award the relief Congress made available in federal court.
“The federal courts are the only institution granted jurisdiction by the statute; it does not give adjudicative authority to any administrative agency.”
Procedural preferences
He treated the complete loss of a jury trial as structural error rather than asking an appellate court to hypothesize a verdict.
“When a defendant is deprived of his right to trial by jury, the error is structural and requires automatic reversal of the defendant’s conviction.”
He enforced the limited scope of an appellate mandate and declined to reopen issues omitted from the first appeal.
“Where a remand is limited to the resolution of specific issues, those issues outside the scope of the remand are generally not available for consideration.”
Cautions
He declined to create a dismissal sanction where the governing speedy-trial provision did not authorize one.
“Although the STA explicitly authorizes dismissal as a sanction for other violations, see § 3162(a)(1) (failure to file timely indictment or information), § 3162(a)(2) (failure to bring defendant to trial within statutory period, as extended by § 3161(h)), it does not authorize dismissal as a sanction for § 3161(j)(1) violations.”
He distinguished impermissible reliance on religion from a sentencing court's permissible assessment of moral blameworthiness.
“The court neither punished Gunderson for being a pharisee, nor held him to a higher standard based on his professed faith.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“Enforcement of the Board’s order is denied.”
“The order and decision of the NLRB is therefore affirmed.”
“We grant Doerfer's petition and set aside the Board's order.”
“Based on the foregoing, we grant enforcement of the Board's order in all respects.”
“We enforce the order of the Board.”
“For the reasons stated, the Board’s request for enforcement of its order is denied in part and granted in part consistent with this opinion.”
“For this reason the district court’s opinion should be vacated and the case remanded to the district court for resentencing.”
“We conclude the district court did not err in refusing to dismiss the indictment against Walker, and we leave for another day the question of whether and under what circumstances such a remedy may be justified.”
“For the reasons cited above, we reverse and remand in part and affirm in part.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Not applicable to this circuit-court record.
A historical record
Judge Heaney no longer hears cases. This profile stays available as a record of how they ruled. If you're preparing for a matter, start from the court's current bench.